Restructuring American universities

This ("End the University as We Know It" by Mark Taylor) article was in the NY Times today. The author argues that American universities need to be restructured in several ways. I have always been interested in thinking about how universities are organized, and what changes could be made to make them "work" better. So I really enjoyed reading the article. Here are the authors recommendations, each followed by my thoughts:

1. Restructure the curriculum to facilitate cross-disciplinary teaching.

*I like this idea, but think it would be worthwhile to do a large study of interdisciplinary teaching already underway, to see what works and what does not. Unfortunately, most interdisciplinary teaching arrangements I am familiar with have not been successful. I think there are a few issues.

-First, there needs to be a natural fit of the disciplines involved and the theme of the class. It sounds good to put a humanities course with a hard science course, but that is often a mistake. Either one of the disciplines takes priority, or both are covered only on the surface.

-All faculty members involved must be comfortable with the approach of all other faculty members, so that they can truly engage in dialogue, and not just cover their own approach.

-Lastly, and most importantly, interdisciplinary courses either must be able to teach fundamentals or they must be offered only to more advanced students. Students in college still need to be taught certain basics (and this becomes increasingly true as a greater proportion of high school seniors head to college). It's great to think about the problem of "war" from many angles. But if students aren't familiar with the theoretical bent and tools of each discipline, they will be lost.

2. Do away with academic departments and create networks of interdisciplinary groups centered on thematic problems.

*I think this idea is only partly right. The problem (like most of the author's suggestions) is that he assumes expertise within a discipline. And of course, this is the case now--because we have departments that train faculty. Without these departments, how will new faculty be trained in one area, that they can then bring to bear on a central problem? I think we should think about how we can combine the benefits of expertise and generalization.

3. Increase communication between universities so that each institution can specialize in fewer areas, and then students can use distance learning to take advantage of other institutions' strengths.

*I really like this idea. I've never been a huge fan of distance learning, but I think it's getting better.

4. Transform the traditional book dissertation into alternatives, such as projects (websites, films, etc.)

*Clearly written from the perspective of a humanities professor. The hard sciences have already moved to an article-based dissertation, and the social sciences are close behind. The humanities could do this too. I do not like the idea of projects for Ph.D.s, because the primary qualification for being an academic should be the ability to communicate in writing. But given the next suggestion the author has (which I do like), maybe there should be some options for peole who don't want to go into academia.

5. Expand the range of professional options for graduate students.

*Yes! If academic departments took a range of professional options seriously, they could vastly improve the overall quality of ph.d.-graduates. I think a large part of the problem in current departments is that faculty refuse to acknowledge options other than research. Because of this, many students have to make their way largely on their own. Why not try to improve the preparation for people who are going to go into government, for example, rather than ignoring them?

6. Impose mandatory retirment and abolish tenure. Replace with 7 year contracts.

*I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the author's premiss for this suggestion, although not his solution. The author compares this to financial executives who spurred the current recession without oversight. But academia has too much oversight in some ways. Social pressure is extremely strong among faculty, creating all sorts of weird relationships. A little top-down management isn't a bad idea. However, the idea of going through a tenure-like process every seven years seems rather cruel. Maybe there is a way to instill tenure in stages, rather than all at once? And also, perhaps academic departments could have a little less power? Although if that is the case, the ways that academic administrators are recruited and hired would also need to be changed.


I think there might be an interesting way to combine the author's suggestions with the way universities work now--

Academic departments are necessary for training purposes--teaching the fundamentals of a discipline--and for reviewing faculty members' work based on the standards of the field. However, departments as they exist now do not promote creative thinking or an interdisciplinary approach. They do suffer from the problem of over-specialization. Not only does this narrow the influence of academics' work, but it fails to teacher undergraduates and graduate students to take a narrow problem they are working on and apply it to a larger question. So, I would suggest:

1) Keep academic departments, but establish interdisciplinary working groups structured around a central question/problem. These working groups would take over some of the work that departments do, as well as some of the power. They would have a chair, would share the responsibility for curriculum construction, and would take part in peer review of others' work within the group.

2) Teaching would take place both within the departments (to instill fundamentals) and working groups (to encourage interdisciplinary thinking), and faculty members would split their required loads roughly in half. Department classes would be smaller, because of their focus on teaching skills. Interdisciplinary courses would have more students, because they would have more than one faculty member teaching, and there would be more onus on the students to be independent scholars.

3) Both academic departments and working groups would evaluate their members for tenure and other promotions. Tenure would remain, but faculty would continue to be evaluated. If faculty members do not maintain high standards after tenure, they could be taken out of working groups and placed in departments as instructors/adjunct professors. They would retain job security but lose prestige. They could work to be reinstated, however.

4) Graduate students would apply to departments, but their education would take place in both a department and a working group. Students interested in pursuing academic careers would be placed mainly with a department and secondarily with a working group, while students interested in non-profit/business/government and other non-academic jobs would be more integrated into working groups (on the presumption that this kind of discourse would be more beneficial to students who are going to need to apply their skills to real-world problems). The boundaries would be flexible between the two options.

Thoughts?